Prince Albert's death finally solved 150 years, he was suffering Crohn's disease | Daily Mail Online comments His sudden death 150 years ago this week propelled his adoring wife, Queen Victoria, into life-long mourning. And until now it had always been thought that Prince Albert’s unexpected passing on December 14, 1861 - at the age of just 42 - had been caused by a virulent bout of typhoid fever. Now an acclaimed historian, who has spent the last three years researching the death of the Prince Consort, believes he actually succumbed to a very modern affliction – Crohn’s Disease. Mystery solved: Historian Helen Rappaport who has uncovered details about the death of Prince Albert Crohn’s is a serious – and sometimes fatal - form of inflammatory bowel disease that today affects one in 500 people. While the exact cause is unknown, the condition is linked to a problem with the body’s immune system response. RELATED ARTICLES Share this article Share A person’s genes and environmental factors seem to play a role in the development of Crohn’s disease, but it usually occurs in people between ages 15 - 35.

Symptoms can come in waves and include debilitating and crampy abdominal pain, fever, fatigue, loss of appetite, chronic diarrhoea, liver inflammation and weight loss. So were the Royal Family simply mistaken about Albert’s death or was there a cover up? According to author Helen Rappaport - who has been given unrivalled access to contemporary records including both Albert and Victoria’s private letters, the Royal Archives and records of the Royal Household – the Queen’s husband had been chronically sick on and off all his adult life and suffered from long-standing gastric problems. Deep bond: Queen Victoria was distraught after Prince Albert's death at the age of 42 This was never verified by doctors after his death, however, as grieving Victoria refused to allow a post-mortem to be carried out on her beloved husband. So Rappaport took her findings, contained in a detailed 14-page medical dossier, to the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford where Dr Chris Conlon, consultant in infectious diseases including typhoid, and Dr Simon Travis, consultant in gastroenterology, examined them in detail.

Having looked at the evidence, both doctors dismissed typhoid fever and cancer as possible causes of death and concluded the evidence for Crohn’s looked very strong. They pointed out that there are a number of similarities between the symptoms displayed by those suffering from typhoid fever and Crohn’s disease, including fever and severe abdominal pain, which may have accounted for confusion at the time. QUEEN VICTORIA'S GRIEF Her grief over the loss of her husband, Prince Albert, came to define her entire reign. The extent of Queen Victoria’s despair has been laid bare in a previously unseen letter, in which she expresses the hope that she will go to an early grave. The remarkably candid letter, which has been acquired by London auctioneers Argyll Etkin, is thought to be the first in the public domain in which the Queen yearns for her own death, so she can be reunited with her husband. Victoria wrote the ‘astonishing’ letter in March 1863, some 15 months after Albert’s death, to 82-year-old Viscount Gough. The hospital will be holding a seminar into the issue entitled ‘What Killed Prince Albert?”’ next month.

The author then went to a Crohn’s specialist in Belgium, Philippe van Hootegem of the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Leuven. In his written reply, he says: ‘You were able to collect from letters and diaries a lot of details concerning the health problems of the Prince. These data clearly demonstrate the presence of a chronic condition with several years of intermittent episodes of symptoms such as fatigue, abdominal cramps, inability to eat for several days, attacks of diarrhoea etc… leading eventually to a more serious situation of acute illness with rapid deterioration and death at the age of 42. ‘A chronic inflammatory bowel disease such as Crohn’s disease could certainly explain a lot of the symptoms, with episodes of intestinal (sub-)obstruction, diarrhoea, also the “rheumatic” joint symptoms … and finally a complication such as a bowel perforation and sepsis leading rather quickly to the lethal outcome. ‘The hypothesis of Prince Albert suffering from Crohn’s disease looks very attractive and seems to be more likely than the “official” cause of death : typhoid fever.’ In the last weeks of his life, Albert suffered from terrible muscular pains and insomnia.

A visit to the new Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst in the pouring rain added to his woes, as did highly emotional a meeting at Cambridge two days later with his son, Bertie, the future King Edward V11, over his scandalous affair with a young actress, Nellie Clifden. He returned to Windsor tired, emotional and in enormous pain where doctors made their diagnosis of typhoid fever. He died at 10.50 p.m. on December 14, 1861 in the castle’s Blue Room in the presence of the inconsolable Queen and five of their nine children. Fortunately bowel conditions such as Crohn’s, which were a mystery to earlier science, are treatable today thanks to advances in modern medicine. But Miss Rappaport hopes her new findings, outlined in her book, Magnificent Obsession: Victoria, Albert and the Death that Changed the Monarchy, [must keep in] will add to our knowledge of his ‘highly underrated man’. She said: ‘“Crohn’s disease doesn’t necessarily kill people, but there is a direct correlation between stress and flare-ups.

‘All the anxiety and stress about Bertie and politics seem likely to have caused a major flare-up. ‘Crohn’s disease was a totally unknown condition in the Victorian period, so the doctors had nothing to go on. And of course they were desperate for a diagnosis. ‘What actually killed him though, in the last few days, was what killed so many people at the time, especially when weakened by illness: congestion of the lungs and pneumonia. ‘It’s time this highly underrated man was given the credit he’s due. Prince Albert was King in all but name, and had been for many years before 1861. ‘But ironically, his sudden death was the making of Victoria as a Queen. ‘Although it took her many years, she did recover from his death, went on to lead the nation and Empire and set her seal on a whole generation.’ Death of Prince Albert - History in an HourHistory in an Hour Death of Prince Albert by History In An Hour The light is subdued in the Blue Room. He lies in his bed, plumped up with pillows. His breath is slow and laboured, his skin terribly white, his hair stuck down by sweat.

Kneeling on the floor beside his bed, trembling, his wife – the queen. Holding his limp hand, she knows he is dying. Beside her, five of her children, their faces pinched with fear. Standing awkwardly, nearby, various ladies in waiting, equerries, doctors, and a minister or two. But she has eyes only for her darling prince. The time is almost eleven in the evening. As he slips away, she mutters, ‘Oh, this is death, I know it.’ On his passing, the queen lets rip a scream that tears down the walls of Windsor. On the 14 December 1861, Albert, the Prince Consort, died. He was only 42. His unexpected death plunged Queen Victoria into grief so overwhelming that it endured for the rest of her life. Her pain was shared by the nation in an outpouring of angst that would not be seen again until the death, 136 years later, of Princess Diana. But after a while, public and politicians alike began to ask whether the Queen’s period of mourning would ever end?

Prince Albert and Princess Victoria meet The 16-year-old Princess was immediately smitten – on meeting Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha for the first time, she confided in her diary that her German cousin was ‘extremely good looking’. It was 18 May 1836. They would not meet again for another 3½ years by which time, October 1839, Victoria had become queen. This time, her praise went even further – ‘It was with some emotion that I beheld Albert – who is beautiful’. Albert had the teenage queen’s heart ‘quite going’. The motivation for the visit was marriage – the queen, her politicians decided, was in need of a husband – not a king, the young queen was adamant on this, but a consort. Victoria, who previously had been against marriage, was now ready to embrace it. Etiquette forbade Albert from proposing; the onus fell on the gushing queen. With graciousness, he accepted, saying in German, he would be honoured ‘to share life with you’. Victoria was overjoyed – ‘Oh! how I adore and love him’.

Marriage Four months later, on 10 February 1840, Victoria and Albert were married. That night, their wedding night, they ‘did not sleep much’, and she woke to find his ‘beautiful angelic face’ next to hers. Within weeks she was pregnant. She was not happy to be pregnant but she would spend much of their 20-year marriage with child – bearing nine children. The public however was less impressed by this German in their midst; a foreigner after ‘England’s fat queen and England’s fatter purse’. They would have liked it even less had they known the extent that the queen relied on him. From the affairs of state to the minutia of domesticity, she sought his advice on everything – and invariably accepted it. Without him, she wrote, she did nothing… ‘moved not a finger, didn’t put on a gown or bonnet if he didn’t approve it’. Prince Albert was king in all but name. The Sickly Prince On 1 October 1860, Prince Albert suffered an accident – horses bearing his carriage bolted and, unable to control them as they headed towards a level crossing, he had to throw himself off.

He suffered only cuts and bruises but felt as if his ‘last hour had come’. His doctor feared that Albert’s constitution had been so badly affected that if he was to fall ill, he would lack the strength to fight it. On 16 March 1861, Queen Victoria’s mother died of cancer. For a whole month she became a recluse – refusing to see her husband or children, eating alone, and poring over her childhood mementoes saved by her mother. Burdened by his wife’s instability, overworked and overwrought, Albert became plump and lost more of his hair to the point of wearing a wig. His mood was not helped by the shenanigans and indiscretions of his eldest son, Bertie, the future Edward VII, which, he felt, threatened to make a nonsense of the monarchy. On 24 November, in the pouring rain, Albert paid a visit to his wayward son in Cambridge. The visit brought a degree of rapprochement between the two, but Albert caught a dreadful chill.

The queen later blamed her son for Albert’s illness – ‘That boy…I never can, or ever shall look at him without a shudder.’ Depressed and run down, Albert complained of stomach pains which had been troubling him for a number of years. He feared the illness would kill him but kept his fears to himself. Once he told his wife that if he fell ill he would not ‘struggle for life. I have no tenacity of life’. The queen began to tire of her husband’s complaints, writing in a letter, ‘I need not tell you what a trial it is to me’. Only on 11 December, three days before his death, did the doctors convey the true extent of her husband’s illness. Albert was too weak to even hold a pen and wandered from room to room listlessly, with Victoria following him, hallucinating he was back in Germany. Albert had contracted, so his doctors told Victoria, a fever, a euphemism for typhoid. Subsequent theories point to stomach cancer. In his final hours doctors administered constant doses of brandy. They were powerless. At 11pm, 14 December 1861, Prince Albert died.

He was buried nine days later, the Queen too grief-stricken to attend the funeral. The Widow of Windsor The Blue Room in which Prince Albert died remained unaltered for the rest of Victoria’s life, a snapshot of the time when her life changed forever. The glass from which he had taken his last sip was kept on his bedside table, his blotting book and pen forever opened at its last entry, fresh flowers delivered every day. Victoria retreated into her period of mourning, which by the dictates of Victorian society, was expected to be a year. However, Queen Victoria doggedly refused to come out of mourning. She wore black for the rest of her life, and retired from public life and matters of the state for many years. The politicians feared she was suffering from insanity – after all, her grandfather, King George III, had been inflicted. Queen Victoria would reign for another 40 years without her husband to guide her. As Benjamin Disraeli wrote, ‘With Prince Albert we have buried our sovereign. This German prince has governed England for 21 years with a wisdom and energy such as none of our kings has ever shown’.

Rupert Colley BBC - History - Prince Albert z Prince Albert, 1854 © Albert was the husband and consort of Queen Victoria and a significant influence on his wife. She never recovered from his premature death. Albert Francis Charles Augustus Emmanuel of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha was born on 26 August 1819 at Schloss Rosenau, in Bavaria, the younger son of the duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. When he was seven, his father divorced his mother on grounds of adultery, and she was sent to live in Switzerland and forbidden to see her children. Albert was educated at Bonn University. In 1840, he married his cousin, Queen Victoria. The marriage was unpopular in some quarters, and parliament resisted granting Albert what his wife regarded as a suitable allowance. Albert's role as advisor to his wife came into full force after the death of Lord Melbourne, the prime minister, who had exerted a strong paternal influence over Victoria, and Albert began to act as the queen's private secretary. He encouraged in his wife a greater interest in social welfare and invited Lord Shaftesbury, the driving force behind successive factory acts, to Buckingham Palace to discuss the matter of child labour.

His constitutional position was a difficult one, and although he exercised his influence with tact and intelligence, he never enjoyed great public popularity during Victoria's reign. It wasn't until 1857 that he was formally recognised by the nation and awarded the title 'prince consort'. Albert took an active interest in the arts, science, trade and industry. He masterminded the Great Exhibition of 1851, with a view to celebrating the great advances of the British industrial age and the expansion of the empire. He used the profits to help to establish the South Kensington museums complex in London. In the autumn of 1861, Albert intervened in a diplomatic row between Britain and the United States and his influence probably helped to avert war between the two countries. When he died suddenly of typhoid on 14 December, Victoria was overwhelmed by grief and remained in mourning until the end of her life. She commissioned a number of monuments in his honour, including the Royal Albert Memorial in Kensington Gardens completed in 1876. Albert and Victoria had nine children, most of whom married into the other royal houses of Europe.

The Prince Consort and his Legacy: A Review of Jules Stewart's "Albert: A Life" [ Victorian Web Home —> Book Reviews —> Victorianism —> Queen Victoria ] [Formatted, with the addition of headings, images and captions, by JB . All images other than the first one are either from our own website, or from the Library of Congress Digital Gallery. Details of the latter are given at the end. They can be used without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose, provided you cite the photographer/source, and link your document to the Victorian Web or cite it in a print one. Click on the thumbnails for larger images.] Front cover of the book under review During Queen Victoria's prolonged period of mourning, her determination to commemorate her husband gave Prince Albert more of a presence in the public imagination than he had ever had before. Prime examples of monuments to him are, of course, the Albert Memorial and Royal Albert Hall in South Kensington, near Victoria's own birthplace, Kensington Palace , and the site of his own brainchild, the Great Exhibition . There were written memorials as well.

The Queen herself commissioned the Scottish lawyer and writer, Theodore Martin, to write his biography, and a weighty five-volume tome eventually appeared in 1882 as The Life of HRH the Prince Consort. Several other biographies followed, with Jules Stewart writing this, the latest, to mark the 150th year of the Prince's death. Stewart has made use of all the previous ones, especially Martin's exhaustive account, duly acknowledging his debts to them in his endnotes and bibliography. The result is a compact, informative book for the wider market, written in an accessible style, and containing over twenty illustrations including a useful family tree and a reproduction of the Prince's coat of arms. Earlier Life Left: "[P]astoral Coburg" in Bavaria (Stewart 3), Albert's native town. Right: Rosenau, the summer home where Prince Albert was born and brought up — a fifteenth-century castle close to Coburg. Both images come from the Library of Congress Digital Gallery. In a straightforward chronological account of Prince Albert's life, Stewart explains that he was the younger son of Duke Ernest of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld and his wife Princess Louise of Saxe-Coburg-Altenburg.

The couple were both promiscuous (Stewart later talks of Albert's "philandering biological father," 146), and soon went their separate ways. After their divorce, their two sons, Ernest and Albert, grew up in the Duke's summer home of Rosenau, four miles from Coburg, under the guidance of a young philosophy graduate, Johan Florschutz, selected for the purpose by the Duke's physician and adviser Baron Christian Friedrich Stockmar. From Florschutz the boys received a classical education; but their tutor also taught them modern languages, mathematics and so on, and took them on a Grand European tour, familiarising them with the great continental capitals and taking them to museums and concerts. Then came the search for suitable spouses. Ernest was to inherit his father's dukedom, but Stockmar wanted to bring about a union between the House of Saxe-Coburg and the British royal family, as did the young man's uncle, King Leopold of the Belgians — widower of the late Princess Charlotte of England, and brother of the Duchess of Kent (born Victoria Saxe-Coburg Saalfield). He was therefore uncle to the Duchess's daughter Victoria as well as to Albert.

The opportunity came when the Duchess invited these two nephews to Victoria's seventeenth birthday. Victoria, now heir presumptive to the English throne, had several suitors, including William and Alexander of Orange and the Duke of Brunswick. The cheap press even gossiped that the 54-year-old U. S. President Martin Van Buren had "thrown his hat into the ring" (23). But, as Leopold had hoped, Victoria was smitten by Albert, confessing to her uncle Leopold that she “cried bitterly, very bitterly” (25) when he left. She was still very young, however, and decided to wait. Marriage After leaving London, Albert went to Belgium and then to Bonn where he enrolled at Bonn University. On Victoria's accession in 1837, he sent his felicitations, but tactfully kept out of the picture, realizing that this would be a period of adjustment. He took a long tour of the Italian cities, visiting Rome, Florence, Milan and Genoa, and returned to Windsor only in October 1839.

Victoria welcomed him with open arms, and they were married at the Chapel Royal of St James's Palace on 10 February 1840. However, the match was not a popular one. Albert was, after all, a foreigner. Parliament refused the usual allowance of £50,000 to the sovereign's spouse, reducing it to £30,000. Moreover, it overruled Victoria's wish for him to be given the title of Prince Consort — it would be granted belatedly, along with other royal privileges, in 1857, only four years before his death. He did have certain rights: the Regency Bill of 1840 entitled him to rule in the event of the Queen's death so long as their children were under 18 years of age. Besides, he was allowed to occupy the seat next to the throne at official functions, was made a member of the Privy Council, and appointed the Colonel Commandant of the 11th Hussars. But the public in general remained prejudiced against him, and Stewart reminds us that, in all, seven assassination attempts were to be made against the royal couple.

In these circumstances, despite the respect he earned from some of the most powerful men of the day, and his deep interest in European affairs, it was impossible for Albert to make his mark on the political scene. As a historian, Stewart cannot resist giving and elaborating on the political views expressed in Albert's personal letters to friends and politicians, but admits that "[h]is largely self-imposed, it must be said, political vocation in the affairs of a foreign land never sat comfortably with him" (78), and that neither he (nor the Queen herself for that matter) could have much practical effect on the running of the country and its policies. Nevertheless, at home Albert was king: Stewart repeats without commenting on its authenticity the oft-told story that once, when Albert had locked the door of his room, he refused to allow Victoria to enter until she pleaded with him, not as his Queen, but as his wife. Cultural, Social and Building Projects More importantly, he actively sought outlets for his untapped energies, and Stewart delineates in rich detail the enormous amount of good that he subsequently did for the social, cultural and artistic life of his adopted land.

His first chance came when Prime Minister Robert Peel made him the chairman of the royal commission formed to advise the government on rebuilding the Houses of Parliament . Albert appointed a select fine arts committee which recommended that the House of Lords be decorated with large frescos. Artists and sculptors were recruited, their decorative works adding grandeur to the buildings and bringing "multitudes" to admire them, fulfilling his “ambition of raising public tastes in art” (70). Next, Albert tried to improve the musical taste of his people. He himself was an able composer: Stewart tells us that he was responsible for “nearly forty chorales, anthems and church hymns and other works” (73). He reorganised the Queen's musicians, then playing only wind instruments, into a string ensemble, raising their level and arranging concerts for both private and public entertainment. The couple celebrated their first Christmas together with the masterworks of great composers like Schubert, Beethoven, Mozart and Haydn. Two years later, Albert invited his favourite composer Mendelssohn to play at Buckingham Palace . Next, he turned to the plight of the poor.

A man of high moral conscience, derived, Stewart surmises later, "in part from his deep-rooted Lutheran faith" (99), Albert was shocked at the level of poverty in England in the 1840s. This was a time when manufacturing and trade had slumped, and the country as a whole was in economic crisis. On rides outside Buckingham Palace, he had seen with his own eyes the misery of the poor, and been “dismayed by what he saw and heard — this, after all, was the metropolis, the epicentre of the world's greatest empire” (49). As president of the Society for Improving the Condition of the Labour Classes, he encouraged the building of new houses for working people with proper ventilation and sanitation. Its first urban project was a development in Pentonville, North London, in 1846. The Prince urged rich philanthropists to give generously to similar projects. The Model Lodge in Kennington was built to create similar dry, fire-resistant, affordable houses. He also tried to improve the welfare pension scheme for servants who had hitherto had no such provision.

In these and other ways, Albert "established his credentials as a royal champion of the poor” (95). Stewart notes that the Prince wanted four provisions made for them: education for their children, along with industrial training; good dwellings; the granting of allotments; and savings banks and benevolent societies. He quotes Albert as saying: "I shall never cease to promote these four objects wherever and whenever I can" (98). Closer to home, Albert, who had grown up in the bracing rustic atmosphere of Rosenau, was keen to build palaces for the royal family where he could get away from the “smoke-choked atmosphere of London” (73). In 1844, Peel told him that his friend Lady Blatchfield might offer him her estate, Osborne House , on the Isle of Wight. Albert first took it on a year's lease, and then bought it, asking the eminent builder/architect Thomas Cubitt to re-design and enlarge it. It became, and remained, Queen Victoria's second home; she died there in 1901. Similarly, they wanted a home in Scotland. They acquired Balmoral Castle there in 1852.

Stewart speculates that this “retreat was like that of small Germanic kingdoms of old fairy-stories, in which a king and queen, their sovereignty always recognized, are nonetheless on a carpet-slipper basis with their subjects” (81). The historian Michael Lynch makes the more significant point that “the Scottishness of Balmoral helped to give the monarchy a truly British dimension for the first time” (146). Chancellorship of the University of Cambridge Albert's ideas about education were by no means confined to the working-classes. When the Chancellorship of Cambridge University fell vacant in 1847, William Whewell, the Master of Trinity College , urged the Prince to allow his name to be put up for election. The Prince was delighted but insisted that he would accept the position only if elected unopposed. In the event, the dissenting members of the university put up the candidacy of the Earl of Powis, a Tory and a Fellow of St John's College , an arch rival of Trinity. The result was a close call, 953 for Albert to 837 for Powis. Nevertheless, the Prince accepted the position and thus became the first foreigner to hold the Chancellorship.

On assuming it, he set about modernising the University's antiquated teaching system and syllabus: despite stiff opposition from the older members of the University, new subjects and courses, especially in the sciences, were introduced, and a “reformed, modernised scheme of studies” was “put into effect in the Michaelmas term of 1850” (88). Again, this is no less than the truth. As the Conservative politician and historian Robert Rhodes James has said, Albert brought about a “spectacular revival of Cambridge University from medieval slumber to a world eminence it has never surrendered” (xii). The Great Exhibition and "Albertopolis" Left to right: (a) Detail of the Albert Memorial, showing a seated Prince Albert holding the catalogue of the Great Exhibition, and facing the Royal Albert Hall. (b) The figure of Prince Albert, by the sculptor Alfred Drury, presides over the main entrance to the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. (c) Drury's Albert in its setting. But Albert, with his European background, made his greatest contribution by initiating and organizing the Great Exhibition of 1851.

He had heard of the success of the Exposition Nationale in Paris, and decided to emulate this in London on a grander scale by inviting foreign participants. Stewart says in the introduction that his aim is "to relate the life and works of a man about whom too little is known and appreciated by the present generation" (5), and he retells this part of the story with particular gusto. In 1850, Albert set up and presided over a Royal Commission to work out the details, and appointed Henry Cole , the Assistant Keeper of the Public Records, as its chief organizer. The Commission made elaborate plans and sketches. The public, individually and collectively, raised funds for the Exhibition. First, the venue had to be agreed upon. When Hyde Park was suggested, several members of the Parliament objected but they were soon brought into line. Next, it was decided to enrol almost fourteen thousand exhibitors, a large number of whom were foreigners. When the Exhibition opened, there were more than a hundred thousand exhibits. The general public responded with great enthusiasm, and about twenty-five thousand people passed through its gates on the day of its inauguration.

The price of the entrance fee was reduced for the working-class people who thronged to the Exhibition in large numbers. Londoners, mostly mildly xenophobic, were exposed to the sight of many foreigners in their midst. The Times reported that “[s]trange-looking foreigners passed along in the stream . . . Every variety of beard, moustache, coat and trousers was permitted for the day” (134). Nevertheless, the Exhibition was a resounding success. Over six million people, including literary luminaries like Dickens , Flaubert and Charlotte Brontë , visited it. When it was over after five months, the structure was moved to Sydenham , South London, in 1854. Unfortunately, only the Italian terraces in front of it remain now because it burned down in 1936. But the idea of an international exhibition caught on, and has persisted: World Fairs remain a feature of world culture. Stewart reminds us of how one success led to another. The exhibition proved to be a commercial triumph too, generating a revenue of over £500,00. The Prince decided to use the surplus to build museums of arts and sciences in London.

Again, Stewart traces the familiar stages by which the Royal Commission acquired the nearby derelict land in what eventually became the fashionable area of South Kensington, built the South Kensington Museum which later developed into the now famous Victoria and Albert Museum , and went on to erect the Natural History Museum , the Royal College of Music , and the Royal College of Art, among others. "Albertopolis," as it became known, had arrived. Army Reform Left: The Prince Consort's Library, Aldershot. Right: Prince Albert's coat of arms on the façade. of the library, with his motto, "Treu und Fest" ("True and Steadfast"). . Albert's triumph on this occasion, however, was short-lived. England was now involved in the events leading up to the Crimean War . The Prince felt that England's interference between Russia and Turkey would weaken Europe's position, but the British at heart remained pro-Turkish, denouncing the Prince as a foreign sympathiser: the newspapers "launched a concerted attack on Albert, the nation's erstwhile man of the hour, accusing him of a raft of offences, from meddling in foreign affairs to conspiring with foreign governments" (149).

Having burnt his fingers in the political scene, he turned to military matters. In 1953, he was appointed a Colonel in the Grenadier Guards. He set out to re-organize the army and made suggestions for its improvement. In particular, he wanted it to have a permanent base. For this purpose, he persuaded the government to purchase 3000-acre tract in Aldershot which became, and remains, Britain's garrison town. He built the military library there at his own expense. "Albert the Good"? Stewart, who mentions "Albert's inherent morose character" in passing (151), admits that he was "not perfection personified: he could easily sink into ill-temper and gloom, he took a severe hand to his children's upbringing, and he was highly sensitive to criticism." Yet he feels that such "shortcomings hardly invalidate his kindness, wisdom and high moral principles" (212). There is little sense here of the conflict between the two sides of him — of the driven, conflicted man, the apparently "inexplicable enigma" (182), described by Lytton Strachey in his iconoclastic Queen Victoria of 1922.

As for his marriage, Stewart almost eschews discussing the private life of the royals, perhaps (again) in order to avoid speculation. He occasionally hints at tiffs and quarrels between the couple. For instance, he tells us towards the end that on their twenty-first wedding anniversary, Albert wrote to his old mentor Stockmar, “'How many a storm has swept over it [the marriage] . . . and still it continues green and fresh, and throws out green shoots, from which I can with gratitude to God, acknowledge that much good will yet be engendered for this world' (195). But he fails to discuss the first part of this, concentrating instead on Albert's various humanitarian activities, which he links throughout to his Lutheranism and his Germanic personality. The latter, he makes clear, Albert retained till the end: he spoke to Victoria and their children only in German, his trusted advisers were German, and his last words from his death-bed were German. Albert remained, in Stewart's words, “a foreigner at heart” (105). No wonder then that the British people continued to regard him as such.

Yet, by the end of his foreshortened life, he was well-regarded for his numerous social and cultural works, and his wife certainly thought that he had raised the status of the English monarchy. She wrote to their uncle, Leopold of the Belgians, “For what has not my beloved and perfect Albert done? Raised monarchy to the highest pinnacle of respect, and rendered it popular beyond what it ever was in this country" (170, Victoria's own emphasis). Left: the Albert Memorial Chapel, Windsor Castle, with elaborate marble decoration by the sculptor Henri de Triqueti. "Another striking example of Albert's idealised image is the marble resting effigy of the Prince with armour and broadsword" here (Stewart 216). Right: Frogmore Mausoleum, Home Park, Windsor, where Albert and Victoria "now rest side by side" (Stewart 208). A shadow falls, however, even on Stewart's generally bright picture of his subject. For some time now, the Prince had been suffering from various physical ailments, especially stomach cramps. Not long after the anniversary mentioned above, he fell seriously ill, and died at the age of 42.

The cause given was typhoid, but people grew doubtful because it was not prevalent at that time. Queen Victoria added to the suspicions by adamantly refusing any post-mortem examination. Perhaps he had been suffering from some form of cancer, but, of course, this cannot be conclusively proved now. Despite the speculation surrounding it, his death not only threw Queen Victoria into inconsolable grief and perpetual mourning, but to some extent infected her subjects too. The public subscribed to Albert memorials all over the country and in the dominions, and “Albert” pubs, schools, hospitals and roads sprang up everywhere. In fact, “after the Prince's death there arose a cult of Albert that saw a proliferation of testimonials even greater in number than any erected to Wellington and Nelson” (214). They say that behind every successful man is a strong woman. Stewart, on the other hand, has convincingly shown the enlightened man behind Queen Victoria's eminently successful reign. Explaining in detail Albert's contributions to the many aspects of life in his adopted country, he accepts the Queen's own judgement that Albert “raised the British monarchy to the highest prestige it had ever enjoyed” (217).

This celebratory account is therefore much closer to earlier hagiographies like Edith Kenyon's of 1887, Albert the Good than to Helen Rappaport's recent Magnificent Obsession: Victoria, Albert and the Death that Changed the Monarchy , which analyses his relationship with his wife, and explores a wealth of archival material as well as the now-familiar secondary sources. But Stewart's book is not without value. It does exactly what it sets out to do, usefully confirming and illustrating the Prince Consort's actual achievements, and amply demonstrating that, even if he was largely powerless in government matters, he established the role of the modern constitutional monarchy by creating "the template for royal benevolence" (228). There is no doubt that Albert did contribute hugely to the success of his wife's reign — though we might not go so far as to suggest, as Stewart does, that the age could more appropriately be called "Albertine" than "Victorian" (5)!

Source Prince Albert: The death of Queen Victoria’s beloved husband that rocked the monarchy | History Extra BBC History Magazine - 5 issues for £5 Queen Victoria with Princesses Alice and Louise and a portrait of her late husband, Albert, in 1863. (Credit: Getty Images) When Prince Albert breathed his last at 10.50pm on the night of Saturday 14 December 1861 at Windsor, a telegraph message was sent within the hour to the lord mayor that the great bell of St Paul’s Cathedral should toll out the news across London. Everyone knew that this sound signified one of two things: the death of a monarch or a moment of extreme national crisis such as war. People living in the vicinity of the cathedral who had already gone to their beds that night were woken by the doleful sound; many of them dressed and began gathering outside St Paul’s to share the news with shock and incredulity. Only the previous morning the latest bulletin from Windsor had informed them that the prince, who had been unwell for the last two weeks, had rallied during the night of the 13th.

The whole nation had settled down for the evening reassured, hopeful that the worst was now over. Most of the Sunday morning papers for the 15th had already gone to press and did not carry the news, although in London one or two special broadsheets were rushed out and sold at a premium. For most ordinary British people the news of Prince Albert’s death came with the mournful sound of bells, as the message was relayed from village to village and city to city across the country’s churches. Many still did not realise the significance until, when it came to the prayers for the royal family during morning service, the prince’s name was omitted. But it was still hard to believe. The official bulletins from Windsor had suggested only a ‘low fever’ – which in Victorian parlance could be anything from a chill to something more sinister like typhoid fever. The royal doctors had been extremely circumspect in saying what exactly was wrong, not just to the public but also Albert’s highly strung wife, and very few had any inkling of how ill he was. How could this have happened, people asked themselves; how could a vigorous man of only 42 have died without warning?

The impact of Prince Albert’s death, coming as unexpectedly as it did, was dramatic and unprecedented. The last time the nation had mourned the loss of a member of the royal family in similar circumstances had been back in 1817 when Princess Charlotte, daughter of the Prince Regent – and heir to the throne failing the birth of any legitimate male heirs – had died shortly after giving birth to a still-born baby boy. Public grief at this tragedy had been enormous, and it was no less with the death of Albert. His might not have been a young and beautiful death like Charlotte’s but its impact, both publicly and politically, was enormous. It was seen as nothing less than a national calamity, for Britain had in effect lost its king. And worse, Albert’s death had come at a time of political crisis, with the British government embroiled in a tense diplomatic standoff with the Northern states during the American Civil War. This had prompted Prince Albert’s final act of public business on 1 December. Already very sick, he had amended a belligerent despatch from Lord Palmerston following the North’s seizure of two Confederate agents from a British West Indies mail packet, the Trent.

The agents were on their way to Europe to raise support for the South. The royal family in c1860/61. By championing the virtues of family life, Victoria and Albert had rescued the monarchy’s ailing reputation. (Credit: Mary Evans Picture Library) At worst, the boarding of the Trent was a breach of British neutrality. Yet, Albert had warned that to force the issue without finding a diplomatic way out would mean war – at a time when Britain had barely recovered from the disastrous campaign in the Crimea. His intercession had helped defuse a tense political situation, a fact that prompted Prime Minister Palmerston to observe that such had become the prince’s value to the British government that it would have been “Better for England to have had a ten years’ war with America than to have lost Prince Albert”. Yet Britain had indeed lost Albert, and the prince’s death plunged the queen into grief so profound that it would dramatically alter the shape of the British monarchy, not just for the rest of Victoria’s reign but in the way in which it has come down to us today. The public response in the days immediately afterwards bears many parallels with the outpouring of grief that followed the death of Princess Diana more than a century later.

And, in a sombre precursor of princes William and Harry following Diana’s coffin in 1997, the loss was made equally poignant by the presence at Albert’s all-male funeral at Windsor of two of his young sons, Bertie (20) and Arthur (11). The whole country was swathed in black: shops were shuttered, blinds drawn, flags at half mast, theatre performances and concerts cancelled. The middle classes put themselves and their children into black, and trade at the funeral warehouses boomed as never before. Even the poorest rural cottager donned some form of black, if only an armband. That Christmas, 1861, was one of the gloomiest ever seen in England. It would take time, however, for the far more significant, political impact of the prince’s death to unravel. During their 21 years of marriage Victoria and Albert had done much to rescue the ailing monarchy from the lingering dissolute reputation of the Hanoverians and reinvigorate it as a democratic and moral example for the new age.

The royal family had become popular again and accessible to ordinary people, thanks to the example it set of the simple domestic virtues of monogamy, bourgeois decency and family life. It was an image that Albert had assiduously promoted, right from the first popular magazine illustrations of the royal family enjoying Christmas at Windsor, German-style, with decorated fir trees. Once the initial shock of Albert’s death had receded, the far more pressing question in everyone’s minds, particularly those in government, was its impact on Victoria. ‘How will the queen bear it?’ they all asked themselves; how would she cope with all her onerous duties without him? No one had any doubt about the extent of Victoria’s total dependency on her late husband, not just emotionally but also in dealing daily with the mountain of official business. Albert had been all in all to Victoria: husband, friend, confidant, wise counsel, unofficial secretary and government minister. There was not a single aspect of her life on which she had not deferred to his advice and greater wisdom. Indeed, so reliant was she on his opinion in everything that she would even consult him on what bonnet to wear. The queen and prince consort in 1854.

(Credit: Getty Images) With time – and with his wife continually sidelined by pregnancy – Albert had become all-powerful, performing the functions of king but without the title, driving himself relentlessly through a schedule of official duties that even he admitted felt like being on a treadmill. But it is only after he died that the nation acknowledged the debt it owed him. The laments were many and profound in the acres of obituaries that filled the British press. Many of them were tinged with a profound sense of guilt that Albert had never been sufficiently valued during his lifetime for his many and notable contributions to British culture as an outstanding patron of the arts, education, science and business. Victoria’s descent into a crippling state of unrelenting grief rapidly created problems. It soon became clear that her retreat from public view and her intense sorrow would endure well beyond the usual two years of conventional mourning. Without Albert she felt rudderless. To lose him, as she herself said, was “like tearing the flesh from my bones”. The isolation of her position as queen was profound. “There is no one to call me Victoria now,” she wept, in response to the grinding loss of intimacy, affection and physical love that she now felt.

Albert had been Victoria’s one great, abiding obsession in life. With no strong man to support her, with a feckless heir, Bertie, who had caused her nothing but anxiety, and a family of nine children to parent alone, she retreated into a state of pathological grief which nobody could penetrate and few understood. Worse, she imposed the most rigorous observance of mourning on her family and her entourage and became increasingly intractable in response to every attempt to coax her out of her self-imposed purdah. Her observance of the rituals of mourning became so fetishistic and so protracted that there was a danger of her sinking so totally into her grief that she – and the monarchy – would never recover. The only thing that interested Victoria now was her single-handed mission to memorialise her husband in perpetuity. She did so with aplomb, turning her grieving into performance art as she instigated a range of artistic and cultural monuments commemorating Albert that would transform the British landscape and set their visual stamp not just on the second half of her reign but on our perception today of the Victorian era. Victoria in mourning in c1862.

Her retreat from public life following Albert's death prompted a surge of anti-monarchical sentiment across Britain. (Credit: Getty Images) As far as Victoria was concerned, her happy life had ended the day Albert died. But by the mid-1860s her ministers – and even her own children – were becoming frantic at her continued retreat from pubic view and her dogged refusal to take part in any form of public ceremonial. Anti-monarchical feeling was growing, with regular complaints that Victoria did nothing to justify her income from the Civil List. All Albert’s hard work over 20 years in educating his wife in her performance of duty was now being dangerously undermined. By the end of the 1860s discontent escalated into outright republican challenges and calls for Victoria’s abdication. Then, just when all seemed lost, the monarchy was rescued from disaster. The near fatal illness of the Prince of Wales in December 1871 – on the tenth anniversary of his father’s death – and his miraculous recovery prompted the first piece of state ceremonial in over a decade when Queen Victoria attended a thanksgiving service at St Paul’s Cathedral. Three days later a crude ‘assassination’ attempt against her rallied public sympathy for Victoria to unprecedented levels.

By this time the queen had begun to recover, thanks to the support of her trusted Highland servant John Brown and, in 1874, the return of her adored Disraeli as prime minister. It was by now clear that the queen would never leave off her black, but as she was coaxed back into public view, she did so as a respected figure of enduring dignity and fortitude, ageing into her familiar image of matriarchal widow, empress and ‘Grandmama of Europe’. It was only now that people started calling themselves ‘Victorians’, as the widowed queen set her stamp irrevocably on the great and final days of empire at the head of a ceremonial and constitutional monarchy that survives to this day. Queen Victoria’s Letters: A Monarch Unveiled airs on BBC Four on Thursday 23 July 2015 at 9pm. In it, AN Wilson reveals that Queen Victoria may have led a more exciting life after the death of Prince Albert than we may have first thought. Find out more here . On 25 February 2017, BBC History Magazine will be returning to Bristol's M Shed for a day of talks exploring the Victorian period.

To find out more about our Victorian Day, and to buy tickets, click here . Prince Albert, Queen Victoria's Stylish German Husband By Robert McNamara Prince Albert was a member of German royalty who married Britain's Queen Victoria and helped to spark an era of technological innovation as well as personal style. Albert, who had been born as a prince in Germany, was initially seen by the British as an interloper in British society. But his intelligence, interest in new inventions, and capability in diplomatic affairs made him a respected figure in Britain. Albert, who would eventually hold the title Prince Consort, became known for his interest in helping society improve in the mid-1800s. He was the great champion of one of the world's great technology events, the Great Exhibition of 1851 , which introduced many inventions to the public. He died, tragically, in 1861, leaving Victoria a widow whose trademark attire would become the black of mourning. Just prior to his death he served an important role by helping to dissuade the British government from a military conflict with the United States.

continue reading below our video Profile of Queen Victoria Early Life of Prince Albert Albert was born on August 26, 1819 in Rosenau, Germany. He was the second son of the Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, and was greatly influenced by his uncle Leopold, who became the king of Belgium in 1831. As a teenager Albert traveled to Britain and met the Princess Victoria, who was his cousin and nearly the same age as Albert. They were friendly but Victoria was not overly impressed with the young Albert, who was shy and awkward. The British were interested in finding a suitable husband for the young princess who was to ascend to the throne. British political tradition decreed that a monarch could not marry a commoner, so a British suitor was out of the question. Victoria's future husband would have to come from European royalty. Albert's relatives on the continent, including King Leopold of Belgium, essentially steered the young man toward being Victoria's husband. In 1839, two years after Victoria became Queen, Albert returned to England and proposed marriage. The Queen accepted.

Marriage of Albert and Victoria Queen Victoria married Albert on February 10, 1840 at St. James Palace in London. At first the British public and the aristocracy thought little of Albert. While he was born of European royalty, his family was not wealthy or powerful. And he was often portrayed as someone marrying for prestige or money. Albert was actually quite intelligent and was devoted to helping his wife serve as monarch. And over time he became an indispensable aid to the queen, advising her on political and diplomatic affairs. Victoria and Albert had nine children, and by all accounts their marriage was very happy. They loved being together, sometimes sketching or listening to music. The royal family was portrayed as the ideal family, and setting an example for the British public was considered a major part of their role. Albert also contributed to a tradition familiar to us today. His German family would bring trees into the house at Christmas, and he brought that tradition to Britain. The Christmas tree at Windsor Castle created a fashion in Britain which was carried over to America. Career of Prince Albert In the early years of the marriage, Albert was frustrated that Victoria did not assign him tasks which he felt were up to his abilities.

He wrote to a friend that he was "only the husband, not the master in the house." Albert busied himself with his interests in music and hunting, and he did eventually become involved in the serious matters of statesmanship. In 1848, when much of Europe was being shaken by revolutionary movement, Albert cautioned that the rights of working people had to be seriously considered. He was a progressive voice at a crucial time. Thanks to Albert's interest in technology, he was the main force behind the Great Exhibition of 1851 , a grand show of science and inventions held at a stunning new edifice in London, the Crystal Palace. The purpose of the exhibition was to showcase how society was being changed for the better by science and technology. It was a stunning success. Throughout the 1850s Albert was often deeply involved in the affairs of state. He was known for clashing with Lord Palmerston, a highly influential British politician who served as foreign minister and also prime minister. In the mid-1850s, when Albert cautioned against the Crimean War , some in Britain accused him of being pro-Russian.

Albert Was Given the Royal Title of Prince Consort While Albert was influential, he had not, for the first 15 years of the marriage to Queen Victoria, received a royal title from Parliament. Victoria was disturbed that her husband's actual rank was not clearly defined. In 1857 the official title of Prince Consort was finally bestowed upon Albert by Queen Victoria. Death of Prince Albert In late 1861 Albert was stricken with typhoid fever, a disease which was quite serious though not usually fatal. His habit of overwork may have weakened him, and he suffered greatly from the disease. Hopes for his recovery dimmed, and he died on December 13, 1861. His death came as a shock to the British public, especially as he was only 42 years old. On his deathbed, Albert had been involved in helping to lessen tensions with the United States over an incident at sea. An American naval vessel had stopped a British ship, the Trent, and seized two emissaries from the Confederate government during the early stage of the American Civil War . Some in Britain took the American naval action as a grave insult and wanted to go to the war with the United States.

Albert viewed the United States as a friendly nation to Britain and actively helped steer the British government from what surely would have been a pointless war. Prince Albert Remembered The death of her husband devastated Queen Victoria. Her grief seemed excessive even to people of her own time. Victoria would live as a widow for 40 years, and was always seen wearing only black, which helped create an image of her as a sullen and remote figure. Indeed, the term Victorian often implies a seriousness which is in part due to Victoria's image as someone in deep grief. There is no question that Victoria deeply loved Albert, and after his death he was honored by being entombed in an elaborate mausoleum at Frogmore House, not far from Windsor Castle. After her death, Victoria was entombed beside him. The Royal Albert Hall in London was named in honor of Prince Albert, and his name is also affixed to London's Victoria and Albert Museum. A bridge crossing the Thames, which Albert suggested building in 1860, is also named from him.

Magnificent Obsession: Victoria, Albert And The Death That Changed The Monarchy | Daily Mail Online comments Prince Albert was King in all but name and when he died, the nation mourned like never before. Here – drawing on a wealth of contemporary papers, some buried deep in the Royal Archives – the acclaimed historian and expert on the Victorian era, HELEN RAPPAPORT, reveals for the first time the drama of his death, the Queen’s devastating grief, and the ‘lost’ decade that helped define the Royal Family as we know it today... Regal bearing: Emily Blunt and Rupert Friend as Victoria and Albert in the 2009 film The Young Victoria It was the coldest Christmas for 50 years, they said, a bitter winter hard on the heels of a sunless summer. In the final weeks of 1860, country people talked of birds frozen on trees and song thrushes dying in their thousands. The week before, the Royal Family had transferred from Buckingham Palace to their private apartments at Windsor Castle, a medieval fortress that came into its own at this time of year.

The silence along its Grand Corridor, muffled by the red carpets and huge damask curtains, was broken by the sound of laughter and children’s voices. Fires blazed with beech logs in the reception rooms – the Queen did not like the smell of coal – and the Royal apartments gave pride of place to a host of Christmas trees imported from Prince Albert’s native Germany. In the Oak Room, where presents were exchanged, large ornamental trees were decorated with little cakes, bonbons, gilt walnuts and gingerbread, the effect completed with coloured ribbons, wax tapers and a frosting of artificial snow and icicles. Outside, the castle rose up like a fairytale citadel in the dazzling white of the surrounding landscape. No matter that the aristocracy disliked Prince Albert and his ‘disdainful’, reserved German manner. Once he had been dismissed as a pauper prince; now he and Victoria, with their nine pretty children, were idolised by the respectable classes as the domestic ideal. At the age of 42, Victoria had enjoyed 20 years of happy marriage. Britain’s Queen adored her husband with a fierce devotion that no one dared criticise and nothing could dim.

He was everything to her: surrogate father, best friend and teacher – King in all but name. No one who was at Windsor that year could have failed to be impressed by the conviviality of the British Royal Family at home. But for the Queen, it would prove to be the last truly happy Christmas she would see. RELATED ARTICLES Share this article Share The detail of the unfolding tragedy to come, the astonishing national response and the depth of the crisis that followed can only be revealed here thanks to neglected and unseen correspondence from the time, much of it in diary form, including Queen Victoria’s moving – and unpublished – private account of her husband’s death. The festivities were approaching once again the following December, 1861, when the Prince Consort found himself labouring with ‘a nasty, feverish sort of influenza and a deranged stomach’, as Victoria described it. Albert’s health had been fragile for years and he succumbed regularly to stomach problems, fevers and chills. The Royal doctors had seemed confident of a recovery, but by Friday, December 13 pneumonia had set in and by the following morning he was gravely ill.

Loyal friend: The widowed Queen Victoria with her dog Sharp at Balmoral As the afternoon wore on, he became delirious. At 5.30pm, the Royal Household gathered. By 9pm, a telegram was sent from Windsor to London announcing Albert’s condition was desperate. In the King’s Room the Queen longed for some sign of recognition from her husband. She leant forward and in German, the language she had grown up speaking, whispered in Albert’s ear: ‘Es ist kleines Frauchen’ – It is your little wife – and asked for ‘ein Kuss’ – a kiss – but he could barely raise his head from the pillow. She retired to the anteroom, where she sank to the floor, her hair awry and her face buried in her hands. ‘Why?’ she asked plaintively, ‘Why must I suffer this? It is like tearing the flesh from my bones,’ she sobbed. Within half an hour a rapid change had set in; Prince Albert was now bathed in sweat. The only sound in the King’s Room was the dying Prince’s struggle for breath. Their daughter Princess Alice recognised it: ‘That is the death rattle,’ she whispered.

Victoria had heard Albert’s heavy breathing from the next room. ‘I’m afraid this takes away all our hope,’ Alice told her. Upon which, Victoria – as Alice later wrote – ‘started up like a Lioness rushed by every one, and bounded on the bed imploring him to speak and to give one kiss to his little wife’. Even now the doctors were fruitlessly trying to dose him with brandy on a sponge. Distraught, Victoria kissed Albert passionately and clung to him. His breathing became gentle. ‘Oh, this is death,’ she cried out, taking his left hand, which already felt quite cold. ‘I know it. I have seen this before,’ she sobbed as she knelt by his side. He was just 42. It took some persuasion to get her to leave the room; upon which she rushed straight up to the nursery, followed by the children, calling out as she went: ‘Oh! Albert, Albert! Are you gone?’ Midnight struck as the Queen, deranged by grief, still sat in the nursery. According to one of the Queen’s dressers, Annie Macdonald, she was ‘gazing wildly and as hard as a stone’.

The following morning there was a terrible tolling of bells. It had begun just after midnight when the great bell of St Paul’s Cathedral had begun sounding a long, slow lament across the wintry streets. Everyone knew what it signified. The Prince Consort was dead. A bulletin issued at 8am by the Mansion House confirmed the news. For most of Britain, the first intimation came with the slow tolling of more bells, many of them muffled, at intervals of half a minute, which rang out as people made their way to Sunday-morning service. The dark arts: Prince Albert's death in 1861 sparked a booming trade for jet jewellery, made in workshops such as this one in Whitby, North Yorkshire Across London the blinds of private houses were drawn, the brass plates on doors surrounded with black, and mirrors and lamps indoors also covered. Omnibus drivers tied scraps of crape, a matt gauze of silk and cotton tightly crimped like the crepe paper named after it, to their whips; in the countryside even beehives were draped in the fabric, as part of the age-old superstition of telling bees of a death. The nation mourned as it had never mourned before.

Many tradesmen either entirely or partially closed their businesses. London was like a city struck by the plague. At Osborne House on the Isle of Wight, where she had retreated, the Queen was beyond consolation. The Royal Household was adrift, affairs of state abandoned. Since birth, she had relied on others. She had never acted alone until the first months of her reign, after which she had quickly accepted the guidance of her Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne. Then Albert had come along and, as the children arrived, assumed many responsibilities of state. With Albert gone, Victoria’s courtiers and Ministers feared a catastrophe; there was no one to replace him in the day-to-day work of running the Monarchy. And the true extent of the Queen’s unquenchable mourning was only just beginning to make itself known. ‘They cannot tell what I have lost,’ she kept insisting. She was obsessed with one thought: to die, to ‘join what was the sunshine of her existence, the light of her life’.

Obsessive love: Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, left, pictured in 1854 re-enacting their wedding ‘There is no one to call me Victoria now,’ she had wept, though the version she used with her German-speaking relatives was more wrenching: ‘I have no one now in the world to call me “du” [the friendly, intimate form of you].’ It was at night that she missed Albert’s presence most. She was still young and her ardour had been overwhelming. ‘What a dreadful going to bed!’ she wrote. ‘What a contrast to that tender lover’s love. All alone!’ She envied her eldest daughter Vicky, who had a husband ‘on whose bosom you can pillow your head when all seems dark’. Shortly before New Year, she gave instructions that the public mourning for the Prince Consort should be ‘for the longest term in modern times’; members of the Royal Household would not appear in public out of mourning for a year. The year 1862 was a very good one for Jay’s London General Mourning Warehouse in Oxford Circus.

Thanks to the unprecedented demand for its ‘Noir Impériale’ black silks and its best patent crape, Jay’s was forced to enlarge its premises. Although general mourning had officially ended on February 10, there was no let-up in what had become an ‘almost incalculable demand’ for mourning goods. Drapers, haberdashers, milliners and tailors filled their shops with black. British manufacturing went into mass production of commemorative items: plaques and busts, plates, handkerchiefs, pot lids, jugs, bookmarks, even special mourning tea sets. HE NEEDS GERMANISING When Prince Albert died aged just 42 the public and the medical profession were shocked. But officials blocked the release of any details about his death. The Royal doctors were not certain of their diagnosis and the Queen refused to allow a post-mortem. So began 150 years of acceptance that typhoid had killed Albert. However, in 1993 an obscure article in a medical journal suggested the Prince may have suffered from Crohn’s disease, a gastric condition.

Albert’s worry over his wayward son Bertie might have provoked a flare-up leading to septicaemia and finally pneumonia, which killed him. Photographic dealers did a roaring trade in images of the late Prince Consort. Victoria had stated that ‘The Queen intends to wear her weeds (if she lives) at least till the beginning of 1864’ and such was the level of public sympathy for her that many of the middle classes decided to follow suit. Victoria soon determined she would remain in mourning for the rest of her life. The Victorian textile manufacturers were in overdrive, offering a vast range of fabrics. There was a huge demand, too, for the dye to make them black. As the trade in jet mourning jewellery expanded, so did the fortunes of a small fishing village, formerly a whaling port. Layers of shale around Whitby had long been a rich source of fossils and petrified wood, of which jet had been the most prized. Much of this jet was washed up on the beach, and, as demand escalated, it was also mined inland on the North Yorkshire Moors.

Jet jewellery manufacture rapidly extended to cover every aspect of Victorian mourning, including beading for bodices, hair combs and headdresses, as well as jet birds, insects and clasps for hats and bonnets. The business of government was increasingly under threat; Victoria refused to discuss matters of state with her Ministers, let alone perform her full constitutional duties. She increasingly spent time at her favourite homes: Balmoral in Scotland and Osborne on the Isle of Wight. Buckingham Palace was deserted. She was also creating diplomatic problems. Victoria flatly refused to entertain visiting royalty. The King of Sweden was obliged to stay at the Swedish legation on a visit to London. When Prince Humbert of Italy visited Windsor, he had to be entertained with a modest lunch at the White Hart Inn rather than at the castle. As time went on, the case for the Queen’s seclusion was becoming hard to argue; she looked well. Yet any disruption to her routine was a provocation and when a favourite lady-in-waiting decided to marry, she was beside herself with rage. Such had been the rising levels of Victoria’s perceived tetchiness that by the end of 1864, her doctors suggested a new form of therapy: pony rides.

It was recommended that Victoria’s Scottish ghillie, John Brown – indefatigable in his care of her – should be brought down from Balmoral with her favourite pony, Lochnagar, for the winter. A strong and protective male was needed who would look after Victoria as Albert had done. This role now fell to the blond-haired, blue-eyed Brown, who after his arrival at Windsor slowly began to break down the Queen’s incapacitating grief. His therapeutic effect was a simple one: like Albert, he brooked no nonsense, spoke his mind and treated her with a kind of male machismo she admired. Grief: Queen Victoria mourned the death of Bertie until her own death in 1901 Meanwhile, public sympathy was on the wane. Practical jokers tied placards to the gateposts at Buckingham Palace announcing: ‘These commanding premises to be let or sold, in consequence of the late occupant’s declining business.’ The British people had been patient for three years, but now the Queen was needed and missed. As spring turned to summer, rumours continued to circulate: the Queen was ill, or mad; she would never live in London again, and – according to French newspapers – was about to abdicate.

Victoria was mortified, but she did not want to look or feel better and was convinced that she ate nothing and never slept. She even hoped that her hair would turn a suitable grey. Victoria had very good reason not to wish to recover, for when this happened she would be expected to take up her ceremonial responsibilities as Monarch – a thing she dreaded. Her refusal to re-enter public life was throwing the Monarchy into crisis; republican sentiment was mounting. Victoria had been hissed and booed en route to the State Opening of Parliament in 1867. She saw at last the ugly faces of anger in the crowd. Yet still she failed to connect it with her own behaviour. She remained oblivious to the everyday realities of hunger, poverty and political unrest (while lauding the homely Scots as being infinitely superior to the English). Trade unionists and socialist-minded politicians began to call for the Queen to be deposed. Republican clubs were springing up in major cities across the country. By the late summer of 1871, even the Queen’s children were alarmed that their mother was prejudicing the future of the throne and composed a letter assuring her ‘that some danger is in the air, that something must be done . . .

to avert a frightful calamity’. A RIDDLE FOR 150 YEARS When Prince Albert died aged just 42 the public and the medical profession were shocked. But officials blocked the release of any details about his death. The Royal doctors were not certain of their diagnosis and the Queen refused to allow a post-mortem. So began 150 years of acceptance that typhoid killed Albert. However, in 1933 an obscure article in a medical journal suggested the Prince may have suffered from Crohn's disease, a gastric condition. Albert's worry over his wayward son Bertie might have provoked a flare-up leading to septicaemia and finally pneumoni, which killed him. Grave illness once again proved a turning point, this time the near-death of her eldest son Bertie (later Edward VII) from typhoid fever. He survived, and by February 1872 was well enough to attend a Service of National Thanksgiving in his honour at St Paul’s Cathedral that would prove a celebration of nationhood and Monarchy.

Victoria and Bertie – still very weak and haggard and walking with a limp (the result of a severe attack of gout) – traversed streets festooned with flags and bunting. And they were received with huge acclaim. The best vantage points were sold at a premium, from ten shillings to 40 guineas for a balcony view on Fleet Street. Many who climbed trees in St James’s Park for a better view ended up in hospital with broken limbs, as did others who fell from windows and scaffolding. Afterwards, gratified by ‘a most affecting day’, the Queen appeared on the balcony at Buckingham Palace to loud cheers. It was from this point on, more than a decade since the death of her husband, that the Queen finally began to re-emerge. True, she continued to avoid Buckingham Palace at all costs. But now she understood how crucial her public popularity was. The lost years had seen a hardening of her (mistaken) image as the dour, prudish, humourless and repressive Widow at Windsor. But out of so much darkness there finally emerged a Monarch with great virtues – lack of vanity, human sympathy, absolute honesty and sound common sense.

The true Victorian age – of pageantry, pride and empire – was still to come. The Monarchy retained the affection of the middle classes, who could relate to the Queen’s motherliness. And through her, they felt related in some degree to something that was socially great – their very own Royal Family. © Helen Rappaport 2011. Magnificent Obsession: Victoria, Albert And The Death That Changed The Monarchy by Helen Rappaport is published on Thursday by Hutchinson, priced £20. To order your copy at the special price of £16.99 with free p&p, please call the Review Bookstore on 0843 382 1111 or visit The stress of that 'stupid boy' and naughty Nellie 'Poor Bertie': Albert Edward, Prince of Wales Ever a martyr to self-induced stress, Albert was consumed with anxiety about his eldest son, Albert Edward, Prince of Wales. ‘Poor Bertie’, as his mother referred to him. He was a ‘stupid boy’ whose attention could not be fixed on anything useful, ‘even at a novel’.

In 1861, aged 21, Bertie, then finishing a training course with the Grenadier Guards, had attended a party at the Mansion House in Dublin. His fellow officers arranged a farewell present for the Prince, smuggling a ‘woman of the town’, Nellie Clifden, into his quarters. He ensured her surreptitious exit via the window of his hut and arranged further assignations back in England – right under his parents’ noses at Windsor. The gossips were quick to dub Nellie ‘The Princess of Wales’, for she bragged about her conquest. The scandal soon hit the London clubs and appeared in the papers on the Continent. Bertie’s parents were deeply shocked. His puritanical father’s stress levels went haywire: Victoria would ever blame her son for the devastating effect on Albert’s health. The episode had awakened Albert’s innermost fears of a return to the profligate habits of the British Royalty. This led to his suffering insomnia and nerve-related pain. On the morning of November 25, Albert managed to take a special train to Cambridge, where Bertie was studying, for a man-to-man talk.

Bertie had seemed oblivious to his father’s ill health, and his poor sense of direction had got them lost during their walk. When Albert returned to Windsor the following day, he was racked with pain. Three weeks later he was dead.

Question: What did Prince Albert, consort of Queen Victoria, die of?
Answer: Typhoid